Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to the field of medical data analysis and in particular to the use of mobile imaging and data technology in a clinical environment.
Description of Related Art
Recent use of smart phones, tablets, digital cameras and portable media has rapidly enabled clinical service providers to capture and save images and other data such as text in a format used more generally for non professional photography or social media. As a result apriori existing standards in privacy and security are often being ignored in order to enable rapid and simple data capture in a clinical environment.
For instance, the dominant apriori standard for radiology imaging and communication is Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (“DICOM”). DICOM standardizes the data format and transfer protocol for data such as images, waveforms, workflow messages and diagnostic reports. It is used in many fields of medicine, such as for example, radiology, cardiology and dentistry. The DICOM standard encompasses a large number of medical imaging modalities, such as computed tomography, magnetic resonance, ultrasound, and digital radiography. The standard assumes that the application entities involved in a DICOM interchange are implementing appropriate security policies, including, but not limited to access control, audit trails, physical protection, maintaining the confidentiality and integrity of data, and mechanisms to identify users and their rights to access data. Essentially, each application entity must insure that their own local environment is secure before even attempting secure communications with other application entities.
However the use of present art smart phones, digital cameras, personal computers and social media present art does not allow for these devices to be used to existing standards of patient rights, and further present methods fall well short of analytical capability that could be used by clinicians to patient benefit.
Present methods can store medical images, waveforms and diagnostic reports including metadata along with content. The metadata can augment the content with ownership, organization, imaging condition, layout, and workflow information. There is frequently a need to search medical data using its metadata or share the metadata in a variety or database formats. For instance, XML is widely used in metadata management applications. However these methods have rarely been combined with advanced analytics such as predictive measures nor with real time analytics.
It would therefore be advantageous to be able to secure mobile data in a clinical environment and further guide clinicians in using these mobile devices to ensure the best practices.
This background information is provided to reveal information believed by the applicant to be of possible relevance to the present invention. No admission is necessarily intended, nor should be construed, that any of the preceding information constitutes prior art against the present invention.